Neil Geoffrey's visit

The author, Neil Geoffrey visited the writing group and the other junior classes who enjoyed listening to his story Gassy Goosey and the Hawk that he wrote. What better way to show our students that anyone can be an author if we know who we are writing for and why?

The excited writing group spoke with the author. They discussed what they thought about the book he had written. They asked him questions about the process he used to write his book. They asked him which part of the process he enjoyed the most. The author told the group that he most enjoyed drafting his imaginary, oral stories he made up to narrate to his own children. The other thing he enjoyed was working with the illustrator to make sure the illustrations matched the ideas he had written down.

The author told the writing group to keep writing a lot with an audience and purpose in mind.
He said that there was a lot of joy in writing. He assured the students in the writing group that
they needed to believe in their abilities to write and polish their writing before publishing.

From talking with the author the students did understand that crafting their sentences

deliberately will improve the way they write for an audience.
Our endeavour to work on crafting sentences, made sense for the students
after this great experience.